Projects with status: Complete

Synopsis

A forerunner of Terry Gilliam’s work for the Pythons, this off-beat exquisite corpse exercise is enlivened by the creative spirit of Bob Godfrey (creator of ‘Roobarb’).
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

Sea gods, mermaids and drunken carpenters. A rare venture into stop-motion from Halas & Batchelor, producers of Britain’s first animated feature 'Animal Farm'.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

A magical tale from the twin geniuses Powell and Pressburger, made up of equal parts true love and metaphysics. "This is the universe," our narrator declares over a darkly twinkling cosmos. "Big isn’t it?" And with that perfect line, so begins one of the most unforgettable experiences in British film, with David Niven’s Second World War pilot Peter Carter falling to earth only to be found by June (Kim Hunter), a young American radio operator. In other hands, what follows could have been a simple wartime romance. Instead, it unfolds into an exquisitely comic celestial courtroom drama, with the guardians of the heavenly ‘next world’ staging a trial to decide if Peter should be summoned into the afterlife. Audaciously gliding between monochrome and Technicolor, this is a strange and lovely masterpiece. (LFF brochure)
Restored in 4K by Sony Pictures Entertainment
Official Selection BFI London FIlm Festival 2017 - Love Strand - 4K Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

This delightfully choreographed Technicolor follow-up to the modernist cartoon classic 'Joie de Vivre', made for Alexander Korda’s London Films, is a lesser-known delight.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

Before opening A Colour Box for the GPO in 1935, New Zealander Len Lye experimented with an all-singing, all-dancing stop-motion monkey hungry for peanuts.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

An abstract look at daily life in London.
A restoration by Cinémathèque Suisse of an unfinished version of Hans Richter's EVERY DAY (1929), found at the archives of the Cinémathèque in 2012.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Treasures Strand

Synopsis

After a dispute fuelled by jealousy, knife thrower John is stranded in an Asian port. There, he rescues the young Chinese woman Song from the violent clutches of two libertines. Deciding that she is the ideal partner for his act, they begin performing together at a vaudeville theatre. One day, John’s former mistress, the stylish dancer Gloria, turns up. John needs money to win her back, so he takes part in the robbery of a mail train and ends up losing his eyesight. He attributes all the good things that happen to him from then on to Gloria. But in reality, it is Song who has been devoted to him all along...
Official Selection Berlinale 2018 - Retrospective

Synopsis

George Studdy’s cartoon pup makes the transition to the cinema screen and sets the tone for many a British tourist with his drunken high jinks in Paris.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

Lost for nearly a century, this rediscovery offers a wonderful opportunity to fall under the spell of Betty Balfour, Britain’s ‘Queen of Happiness’. Betty Balfour was Britain’s biggest star of the 1920s, so the discovery of one of her key films was a major event. Identified by archivists at EYE Filmmuseum in the Netherlands, this Dutch-language version is incomplete, with footage missing throughout the film. This version was painstakingly pieced together by the BFI National Archive's restoration team with new English intertitles. It restores a truly vivacious performance from Balfour, and adds to the knowledge of director George Pearson, a key figure in British cinema of whose films a bare handful survive.
Telling the story of a pair of working class youngsters with big dreams – a cheery chorus girl and a serious writer – the film toys with expectations, blurring the boundaries of reverie and reality, tragedy and comedy.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Archive Special Presentation - Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

The man on the moon and the last Englishman on Earth appear in a clever mix of propaganda, science fiction and comedy, with a killer punchline.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

An early experiment in bringing colour to animation sees a bubble-blowing doll, a toy circus and a stubborn donkey revelling in two-tone glory.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere

Synopsis

Though likely intended as a charming comic tale of young love, this film takes on a strangely gothic hue thanks to the uncanny movements of a puppet plaything.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - Restoration World premiere